Three Word Count Boosting Resources for NaNoWriMo

It's easy to fall behind on your word count. 

Very easy, in fact. NaNoWriMo (or Camp NaNoWriMo) is hard. But the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month was not made to be easy. It was made to help you write your story.

There's no way anyone else can write your story for you. Only you can do it, and depressing as it sounds, no amount of procrastination will assist you in finishing your novel.

So to help you as Camp approaches, I've compiled a list of resources to help you attack your word goal for the month that are (hopefully!) at least a little bit fun.

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1. Word Wars 

Word Wars have proven to be the single most helpful motivator in getting me to write. 

If you haven't heard of a Word War, it's where two or more writers come together (virtually. :p) and write for a certain set amount of time, the most common being ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes. At the end of the allotted time you compare word counts with each other to see who won the "war." Honestly, it isn't as much as a competition rather than a great motivator, but you can view it either way.

If you don't have writing buddies to war with, never fear! There are places on the internet I've found that supply Word Wars, almost whenever you need them.

|| Pinterest Board  ||

  Follow Mary's board Word Wars on Pinterest.

People will pin pictures asking for a Word War. You'll share your results and work out the times using the comment sections on that pin. If you want to join the board, just comment under one of the pins and someone will add you.

|| @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter ||

 If you're a Twitter person, there's an official account for NaNoWriMo Word Sprints.They only tweet during the NaNo months (April, July, and November), so make sure to take advantage of them while they last!

|| Facebook Word War Group ||

 Though this group is busiest during the NaNoWriMo season, there are over three hundred writers, and usually one of them's bound to war with you. When my friends aren't able to war, this is always the next place I go.

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If you can't find any Word Wars with all three of the options I listed above, send me a message over the Camp NaNoWriMo site! | My profile |  Believe me, I am always in need of a Word War and would love to help you out.

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2. Word Crawls 

Word Crawls have become my new favorite thing.  I'll give a quick rundown on what they are:

A word crawl is a type of word sprint that collects a number of word wars, prompts, and sprints into one challenge. Generally themed, participants are encouraged to complete each portion of the challenge in order. Many of these challenges take the form of a choose your own adventure-style story, giving participants mini-rewards in the form of the progression of the story or punishments for failures. They may also be referred to as pub crawls, a reference to the real life activity of the same name from which the word crawls are derived.
- (Taken from Wikiwrimo )

Some of my favorites are...

|| The Mountain Adventure Crawl ||

|| The Fantasy Crawl ||

This one is awesome and very long -- it'll get you lots of words if you follow it all the way through.

|| Harry Potter Crawl ||

Definitely for the Harry Potter fans out there.

|| Hunger Games Crawl ||

And here's one for the Hunger Games people...

|| Camp Crawl ||

For all you Camp NaNoWriMo Campers.

Those are just a few of the many crawls that are on the NaNoWriMo forum. You can find loads more here: Word Wars, Prompts, Sprints.

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3. Word Sprints

Word Sprints are basically like Word Wars, but instead of racing with a time limit, you /sprint/ to a certain amount of words. (300, 500, etc...) Word Sprints are helpful when you have a certain amount of words left to reach your word count for the day, or there are plenty of instances in the Word Crawls (above) where you'll need to write x amount of words.

Two great websites for this are...

Write or Die | old | new |

Write or die. You can only choose one. 

(Ha, I'm kidding.) 

You'll notice that there are two version of Write or Die, the old, and the new. The old has less capabilities, though I view it as less distracting. The new is a lot more fancy. Both work well, it just depends on your preference.

Write or Die keeps you motivated with consequences. If you don't write anything in a certain amount of seconds (you can change your settings to the level of difficulty you want), flashing red lights, creepy sounds, or even your words disappearing can force you to keep writing instead of staring at the blinking cursor.

You can use Write or Die for setting a word goal, but it also has a timer if you choose to use that for Word Wars.

WriteDeck 

This is geared towards sprint with other writers and racing to a word goal. It's super fun, and for me, the most motivating way to write those words. Who doesn't like a little competition?

If you don't have anyone to sprint with, you can also create an account and sprint against yourself. Percentage bars keep you updated with how far along you are.

Like so.

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This was a long post, but I hope that it was helpful! I wish you luck with Camp -- be prepared for a crazy and awesome month. 

- Katie Grace 

Have you used any of these resources? Are there any other helpful websites that I should know of for Camp? 

AND CAMP IS IN FIVE DAYS. ARE YOU READY?